Wong, Jade Snow 1922-2006

OBITUARY NOTICE— See index for SATA sketch: Born January 21, 1922, in San Francisco, CA; died of cancer March 16, 2006, in San Francisco, CA. Potter and author. Well known for her autobiography Fifth Chinese Daughter (1950), Wong was also a talented ceramic artist. Growing up within the Chinese immigrant community, she earned a B.A. from Mills College in 1942 and wanted to become a social worker and help other Chinese Americans like herself. After college, she initially worked as a corporate secretary, but soon abandoned that career when she realized there was a glass ceiling to the corporate ladder she would never break. Instead, remembering how she enjoyed a ceramics course she took at college, she opened Jade Snow Studio. The business was not only an art studio but also a travel agency and gift shop. Here she sold her ceramic pieces decorated in the traditional Chinese style. Her Fifth Chinese Daughter was published a few years later to a positive critical reception, and it would also become a standard on many school reading lists. She would follow this with The Immigrant Experience (1971) and a second autobiography, No Chinese Stranger (1975). Wong's autobiography was adapted to television as Jade Snow in 1976.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

BOOKS

Wong, Jade Snow, Fifth Chinese Daughter, Harper (New York, NY), 1950.

Wong, Jade Snow, No Chinese Stranger, Harper (New York, NY), 1975.

PERIODICALS

Los Angeles Times, March 22, 2006, p. B11.

OTHER

Jade Snow (television program), Public Broadcasting Service, 1976.